Strange stares and region restrictions

Like in the old days when having a big rack of servers was a status symbol among geeks, now running a server farm from your back pocket is oh-so chic. I still rather enjoy my ring-tones as they help prevent, long term, those phantom ring vibrations we learned about during the Blackberry hey-day when people would still feel their phone ringing even when the network was down. Plus since my phone often sits docked (yes, a charging stand, wanna fight about it?) in another room after 5pm, being able to hear it is handy.

When the phone is attached to my hip during my regular working day, I have noticed the ringtone draws strange looks. I mean, so totally 2000s, right? Now if your phone is not sitting on a desk using the leg-room cut-out as a reverberation chamber, or you cannot feel its vibrations through the floor and walls, well, why bother? This type of ringing is the only invasion allowed within our now sound-sterile environments in which everyone wears headphones and no one talks to each other using vocal cords, but instead using messaging apps (because SMS is soooooo 90s, old-timer.)

I must admit to spending an extra amount of time giving certain contacts special notification sounds so I can quickly determine whether this call or message can wait, and for how long, without diverting too much of my attention from what is at hand.

Well, in the business world, anyway. The personal world is much different. Back in the whenevers it was mostly business people, or people with more money than self-awareness, who had the phones in public and if their obnoxiously loud conversations were not grabbing attention it was the obnoxiously loud obnoxious sounds for every kind of notification. Now it seems business people, and those without the need to be noticed by others, try to keep a low profile.

Even with my mass customizations I try to fly low with simple sound effects, like a click for a message, etc.

Sometimes I feel like I might understand how some felt when disco died.

Re: Inclusiveness demands tolerance

For that matter, California, which this thread cites as the epicenter of this so-called "rot," has had economic growth that's twice the national average over the last several years. Clearly it's not as crippling as all that.

Yet California carries at least $1T and rising state debt, holds at least $1T in "unfunded liabilities" such as pensions, has a massive and increasing poverty and homeless problem, massively increasing cost of living including the highest debt-to-income ratio in the country and a housing market which is steadily pricing people out, among other failings.

I would not point to California any more than I would point to Venezuela as a success story.

Re: Inclusiveness demands tolerance

Why does it always have to be so apocalyptic? I agree that slacktivist slogans generally achieve nothing and are a distraction, but I don't really think it's fair to think of them as the proof of decadance.

Because it is not just slogans and distractions anymore. While the social justice crowds are not large enough in numbers to exert social pressure, they are loud and obnoxious enough and have established themselves in positions of consequence so what they do is now disruptive and destructive.

Hashtags don't put food on the table, a roof over your head and your kids in school.

No, but "fairness" would dictate everyone else take care of those aspects and more.

If we do not put our collective foot down now we will continue to lose ground as more people, companies, and politicians are intimidated by the scenes, tantrums, and violence.

Re: Inclusiveness demands tolerance

Indeed, but as the third leg of the post-modernist triad, "inclusiveness" demands enforcement via intolerance.

I am disappointed this article does not delve deeper into the new Code of Conduct and the fallout which has accompanied its implementation, let alone completely ignoring the "killswitch" post to the LKML. There are a number of videos popping up on YouTube which go into debate and what is actually happening behind the scenes, including the ousting of contributors for comments or behavior deemed as bad from many years prior. I strongly suggest people go check them out.

If the new CoCs are allowed to continue as they are, if you want to be a dev of any kind you had better keep your nose clean from the time you enter the world, not just the on-line world, by being Supreme Being "inclusive" and "tolerant" or they will look for your indiscretions, they will find all your posts, and they will kill your career, summarily tossing you into the Shitlord Abyss.

Re: Case sensor

"even after this event, he would never back up his data."

Pretty safe bet. I am rather impressed you were able to re-load the heads without damaging them, or them already being damaged by seeking off the edge of the platter. I am also curious as to what kind of error or event would cause a seek off the edge.

Re: 'The nature of some data may also surprise. App developers receive your age and gender'

"Indeed, this article gives me an itch to rummage my drawer and see if any of the ancient Symbian Nokia's contained therein there still work..."

I am still quite happily using my Sony Ericsson C905a. So long as AT&T's network does not go full LTE it will be with me. I also picked up a bunch of extras from a phone shop so I always have spare parts.

Re: Grown up way of dealing with things

I did a recent stint where change meetings were the boogeyman, directly causing my part of the world to go T.I.T.S.U.P. a couple of times.

And, really, you never know what kind of vendor you will get. I have worked with more than one vendor which told me they would not support the product if we did not do certain things their way, and this usually happened on the day of installation even with several calls and emails beforehand supposedly detailing the process and our requirements.

From turning off all workstation firewalls*, to blank SQL sa passswords, to, yes, full take-over of IIS installations in bindings -- as happened here -- or putting an application in the default website rather than its own. As well, the customer had no means to stand up another server just for the application so we would have to go with it, at least for a short time.

* still forced by a major medical software vendor for one of its Borged products which I will not name, but it does rhyme with Henry Schein.

I have heard tell of several agencies which give awards to their employees. Some of the awards are given to people who clear up back-logs of projects, tickets, paperwork, etc. Some of the award recipients are responsible for the back-logs in the first place.

Re: Dig

The floppies are more fun. I come across a couple every so often digging through what-not I have not seen in years (probably should just torch the stuff and be done with it.) Toss 'em into DOSBox just for kicks or for real torture run them in PCTask on the ol' Amiga.

What was Facebook's cost?

I am not a Facebook user but that does not stop friends and family from whoring me out on my behalf to the whore-master. Being so generous, they are, with my personal information.

tl;dr, frankly this is all a logical conclusion of Facebook's reckless abuse of customer privacy for a decade. Anyone who thinks anything will change is sadly mistaken or just a fool. Regulation is not the answer, either, unless people want to start paying for "Facebook Premium" as well as willy-nilly government intrusion into our digital lives.

Re: What's Not Mentioned .....

So far as a class-action is concerned, where are the damages? Operating systems are fudging over the problem and there is no proof (yet) anyone was actually compromised with this vulnerability, so the likelihood of a class-action proceeding without real damages seems slim.

Not saying Intel should not suffer in some manner for producing faulty kit, just that without any harm done there is nothing to claim in court.

Re: At amanfromMars 1...

Oh, and how long do you imagine just an early AI struggles to make sense of the nonsense presented for media propagation by ...... well, it is really just no more than a few humans, isn't it, with their shortcomings being now made all too apparent to the masses with the virtual tools so easily available and at ones fingertips.

About nine twitterers (experiencing real or faux outrage, statistically insignificant) spewing peer-reviewed word salad and getting massive amounts of retweets from bots (not AIs, just spammer bots) to achieve a level at which social comparison and herd mentality kick in to ensure real meat stick retweets without comprehension of the original tweet nor its origin. Who has time to do their own research? A finger twitch works so much more quickly and effectively than the brain, anyway.

I really doubt it takes a fairly well-trained AI long to figure that out, if not damn near immediately. An early AI should become well-trained on such a diet in short order and either develop an immunity to the inanity or crash and become Tay.

Re: Overtime payments

Just as important though is that keeping careful daily records of hours worked and tasks completed really reinforces the reality of how much you work. Usually people grossly underestimate such things. Once you can sit down and see that you're only being paid for two thirds of hours worked you can consider whether it's time to move on.

Yup, and when you work for yourself this can be pretty depressing. I am often left wondering how in the hell I worked so many hours but can only bill for so few.

You have to take this approach, documenting hours worked and work done, with just about every job, especially where you have autonomy. I worked as porter and maintenance (mostly superficial grounds-keeping) for an apartment complex. I would make stops in the main office to get a drink and spend a couple of minutes catching my breath and talking to the sales staff. I kept getting into trouble for spending too much time in the office and not enough time working. I started keeping a log of every single thing I did, including residential contact which no one else did, and turned it in to my supervisor every day. The lists I turned in were generally rather long. Even so, it never vindicated me in management's eyes so I left. Got screwed out of my Christmas bonus because my last day was at the start of the Christmas holiday.

Later in life I worked hourly for an ISP and would get harassed about rolling in around 11am after having worked until 3 or 4am either on a project we started at 6pm the previous night or coming at around midnight to deal with a critical issue. At some point the VP of the company who complained about all of our working habits instituted, or rather tried to institute, a time-clock method and I warned him that if he did so he would find he owes us a shit-ton of over-time. Finally got tired of the crap and marched over to accounting/HR (both departments in the same person) and demanded to be put on 40 hour salary, at which time I was told I could not be authorized for over-time. Fine by me. The Friday of the first week I had to spend an over-nighter I came in at 9am and started packing up at 10am. The VP "just happened" to be wandering by and had a word about it, and I told him I had already hit my 40 hours and since I was not authorized for over-time I had to leave, and I had my supervisor's blessing. Red faced, he had nothing to say about it.

In my time I have had really good managers, then I have had managers like these. By far my best managers were in fast food and retail. Go figure.

Will still be charged delivery fees and tips

Pizza delivery by drone and I still expect to find a $2.25 delivery fee, likely to be increased, and to be charged a tip.

Anyone with a Microsoft Action Pack Subscription remember when Microsoft switched away from shipping CDs and marketing materials to download-only? Remember how we were told that would save money? Remember when within a couple of years prices for the MAPS increased? Remember when not too longer after they Microsoft eliminated discounted renewals?

Re: Time traveling script writing

Time traveling script writing

If they boldly go where no writing team has gone before and produce an edgy Trek capable of attracting the top-shelf actors Tarantino often secures, thereby breaking out of the SciFi ghetto, it will be an achievement to rank with Mr Scot's time-travelling invention of transparent aluminium.

My first thought was, yeah, time traveling BACK in time, but that was quickly thrown away as inaccurate. See, there was a better time for movies. A time when Hollywood would not think about taking timeless classics, stuffing them in anyone's mouth who had a name, letting them chew on it, then serving up whatever got spit out.

It was "edgy" when Data said "oh, shit" as the Enterprise began its uncontrolled fall toward a planet. Even Counselor Troi's outfits pushed the limits (with nipples at least once.)

But F-bombs in Star Trek and all the touchy-feely dreck which has infected the franchise of late does not seem to have an edge to me. It seems like reaching low into the barrel of shock value to remain relevant when you already have something well before its time. This lacks edge, more like a blunt end. Perhaps SNL skits or Family Guy cut-aways, but not Star Trek cannon.

I also cannot buy into this "SciFi ghetto" thing, either. There is some "edgy" SciFi, at least for its day, out there, already, which never managed to "break out." Tarantino may be able to make something which falls under a sub-genre, his own corner of the SciFi universe, but to create SciFi which breaks out of SciFi is not SciFi.

If Tarantino gets the helm I will observe the way I have done with STD (snigger): catch bits and pieces on YouTube and see if anything piques my interest. Thus far, while I could mark it a little above average on story line, technology, and effects, it does not feel like Star Trek but more like its own stand-alone show.

Fallacious logic applied to taxation

"any cuts have to be met with additional tax income."

This presumes the money spent was the government's money to spend in the first place. The natural tendency of government is to take, whether it be money, rights, liberties, property, freedoms (some of these being inextricably interlinked to each other) or whatever else is naturally owned by an individual.

But more specifically, cutting the corporate tax rate means businesses will do more business in the United States. Companies which have moved operations or manufacturing out of the country will have more incentive to return or businesses to build anew, which invariably increases revenue by displacing the losses by moving off-shore.

This does not get into even a little bit of the differences made when government stops taking money from citizens for failed programs, absolutely certain that throwing more and more money at a problem will solve it -- not at all limited to party, either.

Party notwithstanding, if you truly believe the government has a better idea of what to do with your money than you do, whether as an individual or a community, then you are the one still stuck in "more of the same" which has historically failed over and over and over.

Good on ya, PFY

Good to see the young man taking more initiative.

Yeah, a lot of recognizable decision making code-word in this one. Any time management walks into a room and starts "surveying," "assessing," or anything which implies making a plan one must realize there is no plan there is only do. The decision to move forward on an idea was made before the idea was even fully formulated, inspired by a half-read blog post or magazine article. Half-read and quit before the section on caveats and pitfalls, which is always at the end, anyway, since the person writing in the first place lead with the meat to make the idea seem good or practical, putting all the realistic reasons why it will not work way in the back knowing eyes will have glazed over by then.

Like those news stories, "Is your cat plotting to kill you? We'll tell you why at 10." The foregone conclusion is in the headline and you should immediately suspect the opposite is true.

It will be useless and crap.

A lot of promises here. I am tired of people taking the "retro" community for granted and for a ride. Anyone who has access to a real C64 and hardware (that is, anyone with access to eBay or Craigslist) already has what they need to have a good old time with the machine. The HDMI port might be the only useful thing about The64, in particular since so many of the cheap S-Video/Composite-to-HDMI adapters cannot sync to the 240p signal output by the VIC-II and other chips of the era including those in the TI-99/4-series and Atari 8-bits. There are a few which do but it is a crap-shoot, though I over-came with a shiny Onkyo TX-NR656 which does a fairly good job with up-scaling the old systems, including Sega Genesis and original NES.

Disks are not an issue, either. If you have a PC and one of the many models of XU-1541 then you can use a real drive and real disks. Or pick up one of the SD2IEC variants and put your disk images on an SD card. Grab the TOSEC for Commodore 64 via Archive.org, as well as a number of really awesome new games available around the webs.

Or, as another has stated, grab Vice and run a nicely-equipped Commodore 64 (or 128, or VIC-20, etc.) on virtually any platform. Frodo is another which works well for cross-platform emulation -- anyone still run PalmOS or WebOS?

Point being, the Commodore community at large, IMNSHO, will pan this (actually, there are plenty of threads around in which this has already been panned, some with amazing vitriol.) I do not see the names of anyone recognized as modern pioneers on this project, at the very least Jeri Ellsworth who was responsible for the D64TV. Anyone with genuine interest, like those I have met at places like Vintage Computer Fest, will want their hands on the Real Deal(tm) and will get them.

Re: VMS documentation

Nowadays, you have to check the box in case you accidentally threw out the CD.

Around a decade ago I was setting up a device for a customer. I cannot recall whether it was a network firewall or some USB device, this particular detail has long escaped me and is not important. What is important, however, is the instructions came on a CD.

I kid you not, the only file on the CD was a shortcut to the manufacturer's support website.

Forced to use them, irrespective of how we want to live

Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union all enjoy a captive user base. If you do anything in life your information flows through at least one of these companies. Need car insurance, a bank account, to get an apartment, to rent a car or moving truck, to rent storage, to buy a house, cellular, home phone, or cable TV services? Any one of those and more require that your information travel through these services which have proven time and again they lack security prowess.

But, here is where I think we as consumers must accept some culpability: from my recollection all of these breaches have occurred via pathways of convenience, that is, some Internet portal which has access to a back-end rich with data which we can access on a whim via web browser or app. While, yes, we expect that companies will keep our information safe, whether we want them to have it or not, we should also expect a severe increase in risk for having conveniences like web access to such data.

(Of course, we hear about data breaches so much I think we have on the whole developed a fatigue, complacency, and even ambivalence toward personal data collection

But where does the problem really fall? Is it our requirement for instant and unfettered access to information, the entities which fulfill this requirement, or the fact these entities are able to collect this information in the first place? Maybe somewhere else?

It aggravates me no matter how much I personally avoid (or at least try to avoid) situations in which I would be forced to give personal or private information to someone or something, others are quickly handing that information over, anyway. I avoid using Google products, but calling or sending a text message to an Android phone or email to a Gmail account exposes me. Even Some Business and its associated domain is not safe because it uses Google Apps for email, or Office 365, or its records are stored in Azure or Amazon cloud.

I do not use social media, but my family or friends post everything about their lives on it, and by extension when I participate in their lives they post mine, as well, giving me the only recourse of becoming anti-social. FFS, even some of my customers do it!

In order to survive this increasingly connected world I have to accept that my life may no longer be private, at least to some degree, and as such these entities which broker in information have to accept their place as responsible custodians of said information.

How well does "predictive capture" work?

The camera boasts "predictive capture", a fairly common trick nowadays with the phone snapping shots continuously and discarding those just before the moment the shutter was pressed.

On my CyberShot phones I use BestPic. I found many times I hit the shutter a split second early in anticipation but most times I hit the shutter a split second too late. BestPic's ability to capture several frames before and after the shutter (four before, one at, and four after) is very handy to capture the single event and also to catch stages of the event in various frames.

Re: WTF?

Yup yup yup. I was heading right in this direction. All issues with the selection aside, Microsoft has to take some responsibility in its own demise. I was going to ask if a company can be so blind to its bullshit, but the obvious answer is, yes. It plays this never-ending game with its users and devotees screwing them at every corner, including this path of constant obsolescence, pretending users are okay with it and actually want more.

Microsoft has tuned its Reality Distortion Field to work on itself, but its nowhere near as capable as Jobs' in regards to customers. At least in the case of translating frustration from the desktop to the mobile phone market. Microsoft may be King of the Desktop, but that has nothing to do with the goodness of the product and treating mobile phones like a desktop just is not going to bring market share.

In short, Microsoft does not have its shit together.

Now, I know very little about iPhones as I neither own or use one. However, I recently came across an iPhone user with an iPhone 5 running everything a newer device can. That is a five year-old phone running iOS 10 and all the accoutrements therein. That seems pretty impressive to my non-iPhone-using self. Yet here we have Windows smart phones purchased in 2016, applications which cannot run in 10 in 2017, which would only be supported until 2019.

Who are you to dictate file extensions? What if he didn't want to use them at all? What if he had never heard of those particular extensions. What if another program used the same extensions?

Okay, I'll bite. Your last assertion seems valid, but cannot validate the rest of the shenanigans in your post. If a user wants to name paper files which exist in a complete vacuum relative to standards, that is how someone wants to file their papers is generally an arbitrary choice, then that is fine. However, if users want to maintain data in an environment which consists of standards then it most certainly is the admin's responsibility to ensure the users stay withing those standards, or at least in most cases it should be safe to assume those standards are valid and followed.

Of course, we know how assumptions work, so it is also the responsibility of the admin the event that valid data is affected by such automated processes. As a matter of policy I do not delete data in customer use areas and leave that up to the users, even in times when space is low and I have to guide the user through the process I stay away from the liability.

I will agree that if the admin acts maliciously in a this-will-teach-them approach, without ever having taken the time to advise or guide the user, said admin is not meeting his responsibility, but certainly, yes, standards trump the user's preferences, especially for forward usability.

You remind me of the admin who blindly deleted someones file called "penis" that contained biological research data.

He didn't get away with it. I'm surprised that you did.

This is not even close to the same thing. If someone wants to put the name "penis" in their files, then so be it, even more so in a biological research environment. Stipulation this is a real even in the first place and your retelling of the tale is a 100% true representation of the event, the admin who did this sounds like a penis, himself.

I have asked users before, "would you keep your lunch in the trash can?" Then I spent some time showing them how to use mailbox folders or archives.

I never really liked the archives because they were always stored in the local Application Data (or %localappdata%) directory which is not subject to roaming profiles or folder redirection. If the user moved to a new computer the archive PST would have to be moved manually, or worse if the computer tanked it was lost. Storing the PST in "My Documents" is not much better because Outlook has the habit of continuing to run after its GUI is closed, thus holding open PSTs which would wreak havoc with roaming profiles in particular since users have the habit of logging off or shutting down without closing programs.